Social Intranets: A Critical Examination

The traditional information-based, push-oriented Intranets are certainly out of fashion and many say have lost their value for today's organizations. At one time they offered a central location for employees to obtain information on corporate policies and procedures, find co-workers and to store their work documents. But over time they developed into more of an information black hole, where information was stored, but rarely updated and, sadly, rarely accessed.

Organizations far and wide are replacing traditional Intranets with a more "social" Intranet -- one that supports the use of social media tools for enterprise collaboration. The Social Intranet has become a meeting place to share ideas, knowledge and support each other in our daily work activities. Or have they?

While some may argue that the Social Intranet is an informal meeting place for employees, others see it as the hub, or central workspace, providing access to all information and applications. The addition of Web 2.0 technologies along with connections that open up information silos and data in secure applications, provides the perfect environment for an employee to be productive.

To help you better demarcate the traditional Intranet of yesterday from today's Social Intranet, join analyst firm Forrester Research and technology vendor Socialtext as they host the upcoming live webinar: Social Intranets: Hype or Change Agent?The event runs on Wednesday January 26 at 7pm GMT / 2pm EST / 11am PST .